Digital Single Market

Digitisation & Digital Preservation

About Digitalisation

Related topics

The European Commission promotes the debate and monitors the implementation of the Recommendation on the Digitisation and Digital Preservation through country progress reports. Progress reports by country are made available every two years.

Online accessibility of Europe's digital culture requires the right conditions for proceeding with digitisation, online accessibility and the preservation of cultural content.

The European Commission fuels the policy debate and brings stakeholders together to improve the framework conditions for digitisation and digital preservation through the Commission’s Recommendation of 27 October 2011 on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation.

The Recommendation invites Member States, among other things, to consider ways to optimise the use of digitisation capacity and achieve economies of scale, which may imply the pooling of digitisation efforts by cultural institutions and cross-border collaboration, building on competence centres for digitisation in Europe.

Areas of the recommendation

The areas covered by the recommendation and additional information can be found below:

Monitoring the progress made by Member States

The Commission monitors the progress made by the Member States in implementing the Recommendation with the help of the Expert Group on Digital Cultural Heritage and Europeana (DCHE), that gathers representatives from all EU Member States who meet twice a year to discuss issues related to the Commission's Recommendation

on digitisation,

online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation,

monitor progress on its implementation in the Member States,

and exchange information and good practices of Member States’ policies and strategies.

Meetings are chaired by the European Commission.

Member States report every two years on the progress they are making by implementing the 2011 Recommendation on digitisation, online accessibility and digital preservation, and its predecessor. Member States are moving forward progressively but a lot has still to be achieved.